History YMMV / StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E2Darmok

* FridgeLogic:
** Some people have wondered how the Tamarians work with the numbers and mathematics required to build advanced technology considering the idiomatic nature of their language. The ExpandedUniverse has suggested that they have a music-based system of calculations.
*** WebSite/SFDebris has his own, pretty plausible theories on how the Tamarian language works. One involves children learning their culture via telepathy, another is that spoken conversation is used as highly-compressed shorthand (similar to the difference between phone texting and spoken English) based on the complexity of their writing. He also thinks the crew's in-universe analysis is wrong in focusing on metaphor instead of direct analogy; Troi's example of "Juliet on the balcony" is too open to interpretation to be useful in this language, he suggests "Juliet with the dagger" as a better example.
** There is also the question of why the Tamarians haven't come up with better ways to communicate with other species. Given that their technology is on par with the Federation, and they have been spacefaring for at least 100 years, one would expect they'd already have some experience with non-methaphoric languages and a better means of getting their message across. If it had been anyone but Starfleet, it's likely their "Darmok" strategy would have started a war.
*** It's plausible that the reason why they tried such a desperate, risky tactic is that they've been trying to break through to another species for years and have never managed. By observing the Federation they could at least observe they preferred peaceful resolutions, and thus finally took this risk with them, hoping that if they could make a breakthrough with the Federation, the Federation would then be able to let other powers know how they communicate.
** The Tamarians' spoken language is incomprehensible, but for some reason their body language and use of tone is exactly the same as an English speaking human's.
*** A Doylist answer to this would be that the episode was written for a weekly episodic television series and training both actors and background extras to behave in a completely alien way in the time allotted for the episode to be shot is unrealistic. Besides, no one questions the fact that Klingons look and act like HornyVikings.
** If the Tamarian language is so very untranslatable due to its use of metaphor, then how come their speech is rendered in coherent words at all? If the Universal Translator can't interpret "when the walls fell" as expressing "failure", then how could it possibly manage to render the phrase's components as "fell", "when", "walls", or "the"?
*** One person suggested the best way to understand their language is to speak a sentence as it would be in Earth: "Commander Riker, a Benedict Arnold has gone John Wilkes Booth on a Ghandi of a Wyoming-like planet. Take your ship to Captain Kirk this guy and don't get bogged down with the Picard-isms but make like Worf to Duras."

*** One person suggested the best way to understand their language is to speak a sentence as it would be in Earth: "Commander Riker, a Benedict Arnold has gone John Wilkes Booth on a Ghandi of a Wyoming-like planet. Take your ship to Captain Kirk this guy and don't get bogged down with the Picard-isms but make like a soldier at Iwo Jima."

* SpecialEffectsFailure: Did the ''Enterprise'' fire phasers out of her torpedo tube?

* MemeticMutation: "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" is occasionally used to {{lampshade}} a particularly dense reference. Even more, "Shaka, when the walls fell" is referred to as a way to describe EpicFail.

** Some people have wondered how the Tamarians work with the numbers and mathematics required to build advanced technology considering the idiomatic nature of their language. The ExpandedUniverse has suggested that they have a music-based system of calculations. WebSite/SFDebris has his own, pretty plausible theories on how the Tamarian language works. One involves children learning their culture via telepathy, another is that spoken conversation is used as highly-compressed shorthand (similar to the difference between phone texting and spoken English) based on the complexity of their writing.

** Some people have wondered how the Tamarians work with the numbers and mathematics required to build advanced technology considering the idiomatic nature of their language. The ExpandedUniverse has suggested that they have a music-based system of calculations. WebSite/SFDebris has his own, pretty plausible theories on how the Tamarian language works. It involves children learning their culture via telepathy.

* FridgeBrilliance: (along with a FreezeFrameBonus) When Picard examines Dathon's journal, we see their written language resembles an organizational or flow chart rather than a linear series of symbols-- exactly what you'd expect from a language based on expressing ideas in the form of connections to other ideas, and minds that would have such a language.

* FridgeBrilliance: When Picard examines Dathon's journal, we see their written language resembles an organizational or flow chart rather than a linear series of symbols-- exactly what you'd expect from a language based on expressing ideas in the form of connections to other ideas, and minds that would have such a language.

* TearJerker: The scene where Picard tells Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh to a dying Dathon and they finally connect with understanding.

** Some people have wondered how the Tamarians work with the numbers and mathematics required to build advanced technology considering the idiomatic nature of their language. The ExpandedUniverse has suggested that they have a music-based system of calculations. SfDebris has his own, pretty plausible theories on how the Tamarian language works. It involves children learning their culture via telepathy.

** There is also the question of why the Tamarians haven't come up with better ways to communicate with other species. Given that their technology is on par with the Federation, and they have been spacefaring for at least 100 years, one would expect that they'd have some means of getting their message across to non-metaphorical languages. Yet they seem puzzled that an alien culture has no idea what all these proper nouns mean.

* RewatchBonus: The episode is a ''very'' different watch after you mostly know what the Tamarians are saying.

* FridgeLogic: Some people have wondered how the Tamarians work with the numbers and mathematics required to build advanced technology considering the idiomatic nature of their language. The ExpandedUniverse has suggested that they have a music-based system of calculations.
** SfDebris has his own, pretty plausible theories on how the Tamarian language works. It involves children learning their culture via telepathy.

** SfDebris has his own, pretty plausible theories on how the Tamarian language works.

.. SfDebris has his own, pretty plausible theories on how the Tamarian language works.

* MemeticMutation: "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" is occasionally used to {{lampshade}} a particularly dense reference.

* OneSceneWonder: More of a One Episode Wonder, but Captain Dathon routinely appears as the only non-Starfleet entry on fan polls about your favourite ''Franchise/StarTrek'' captains.

* MemeticMutation: "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" is occasionally used to {{lampshade}} a particularly [[ZeroContextExample dense reference.]]

* OneSceneWonder: More of a One Episode Wonder, but Captain Dathon routinely appears as the only non-Starfleet entry on fan polls about your favourite ''Franchise/StarTrek'' captains.